I’ve seen versions of this image for the past forty years. It’s a classic bit of pop culture:
And it’s basically the way Republican voters feel right now (and pretty much all the time), which is why Newt Gingrich is doing so well, and Mitt Romney isn’t.
Steve Kornacki explains why Gingrich’s attack on CNN’s John King for a question about Newt’s ex-wife was such a hit with the debate crowd last night:
It’s no mystery why the audience of Republicans so instinctively and passionately rallied to Gingrich’s defense. His final line was the key: that the liberal media is out to get Republicans and will stop at nothing to destroy them is an absolute article of faith on the right….
What Gingrich did brilliantly on Thursday night is to articulate this paranoid victimhood in a clear and compelling (for his audience, at least) way. It’s the same basic trick he pulled in this week’s other debate, when he connected with another strain of the persecution complex: that honest, tax-paying Republicans are the victims of a dependency class of poor people and minorities that Democrats intentionally enable. Thus did Monday’s crowd rejoice when Gingrich insisted to Fox News’ Juan Williams that there was nothing remotely insulting about his statement that the NAACP should be asking for paychecks instead of food stamps, or his suggestion that children in poor neighborhoods don’t understand the value of work.
Kornacki doesn’t say it outright, so I will: Yes, the “liberal media” is a favorite wingnut target, but the key here is that he attacked the media head-on, face-to-face, on both occasions. (In the case of Williams, he was also attacking a black man head-on after that black man talked about racism — very satisfying.) This debate is supposed to be part of a process of choosing a president who’ll take the oath of office next year, but Republican voters have no patience — they want to kill something now.
Gingrich did that. In each case, he had a “liberal media” guy sitting right in front of him and he whaled on him.
This is what Mitt Romney doesn’t do when he talks about his wealth and his business career and his taxes — as I said earlier this morning on my blog, the voters have his back on this to some extent, but what they want him to do is use questions about his money as an opportunity to kill something, now.
They don’t want him to say, Look, Obama’s going to engage in class war eventually, so don’t you guys up here on the stage with me help him do that, which is his basic message on this. They want him to find someone to pound on immediately.
What Romney needs to do is turn the question on the questioner and say, “You are engaging in class warfare just by asking me this, you liberal media commie scumbag. You are the problem. You hate freedom.”
C’mon, Mitt — don’t delay their gratification!
(Kornacki link via Steve Benen. X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
Romney’s basic strategy is to try to turn as many questions as possible into opportunities to blast the president. And it works fairly well for him. But there is so much more to hate and fear than just the president. There’s his wife and kids, for example. And the Iranians. The Muslims. The secularists. The minorities. The gays. The poor. Newt knows this and he doesn’t skimp on the hate and fear.
that delayed gratification is what defines the middle class as middle class! Gingrich is playing to the lumpenproletariat that wants bread and circuses, and wants them NOW. Obama is the very last man to challenge him on this. The repugs sense this and thus want Gingrich as their man to take on the President. They don’t want one member of the establishment (Romney) fighting with another (Obama). Where’s the fun in that?
Republican politics is a blood sport. What’s the point in having guns if you can’t shoot someone? How can you maintain a sanctimonious righteousness and sense of victim-hood if you can’t identify and attack an insidious evil enemy responsible for your woes? Obama embodies what is wrong with the USA perfectly from their point of view. Finding a warrior to attack him is what this process is all about, and who better than Gingrich to take on this role? He embodies the Hollywood ideal of the flawed warrior who comes good in the end through his heroic deeds.
This is about emotional gratification, not a rational process of change. It is about personality not policy. It is about finding scapegoats and killing them. It is about the warrior versus the professor. It is about good old moral real Americans against seemingly all powerful aliens who have insinuated themselves into positions of power in the librul media and Washington establishments. It is a Hollywood producers wet dream (and a marketing managers ideal template for a successful product launch). Create fear and loathing around your opponent and the consumer won’t even care about the holes in your own product line.
Don’t be complacent. It could work.
Ahhh, Mitt striking back with a demand that Newt release the Ethics report.
What took him so long?
It’s the distinction between Saturday night and Sunday morning that so characterizes the southern republican masses. Only here they prefer Newt’s Saturday Night Fights to Mitt’s Sunday Morning Bobbleheads. Bar stools are a lot more fun than church pews…